by weeklydig
Will Homeland Security Domain Seizures Lead To Exodus From US Controlled Domains?
[Via Techdirt]
With Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group now seizing domain names of perfectly legitimate foreign companies, one of the “defenses” of this action is that what those sites do may violate US laws (the lack of an actual court deciding this is conveniently overlooked, but we’ll let that slide for now) and thus since the domains are managed by US-based registrars, it’s technically property in the US, and thus open to seizure. That, of course, is a case of focusing on the technicality of the situation, rather than the reality of the situation. With Rojadirecta, it’s pretty clear that the site was used almost entirely by people in Spain, not in the US. That the .org domain is managed by a US company seems like a weak dodge by US officials at the urging of industry.
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A Spanish company whose online business was found to be perfectly legal was shut down without judicial oversight by immigration. Does this make anyone feel comfortable? When does grabbing someone’s ‘online property’ happen simply for political reasons happen?
This simply demonstrates the control corporations have over our government. And it won’t change the ability of these online sites to exist. They will just move to servers not under the control of the US. They have not stopped anything and have only hurt US interests.
This is something that could to to anyone at anytime for their own reasons as there is no due process.
The upshot of this is that certain higher domains (.com, .org, .net, etc. ) which have been under the control of the US may well be taken away from US, since we are showing ourselves unable to properly administrate them.
So is the next step the censorship of these sites, the inability of US citizens from accessing foreign sites if deemed harmful to corporations?
Even in America autocratic impulses can be seen. The difference is that the autocrats are the corporations whose money has corrupted the system. They will continue to try and find ways for our authorities to disrupt the Internet because the Internet directly threatens their business models.
They control the path our government takes , not the people. What was it Mussolini called a state run by corporations? While that quote may be apocryphal, Roosevelt did say have this to say:
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism â ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.
Does that sound familiar. Is it any coincidence that at a time where private power may be stronger than the democratic state we also have a business system that does not provide employment to sustain an acceptable standard of living? Wall Street is way up and profits are huge yet unemployment is still high. Businesses are more successful than ever with fewer people working for them. The median income has not kept up with the growth in productivity.
One of Marx’s most famous quotes is “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Although Wikiquotes indicates that the original is not as pithy, I do not find farce very funny.
Sometimes I feel that the original Rollerball – with companies taking the place of nations â was more correct than it seemed.
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